


Twelve Days - Six

by abbykrieger



Series: Twelve Days [6]
Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2013-12-30
Packaged: 2018-01-06 18:50:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1110306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbykrieger/pseuds/abbykrieger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you’d had her, seriously take a minute, if you’d had her, what would you have done with her? Tried to kill her probably. Which actually happened. That wasn’t magic only, you knew. It was what love in your heart sits with. It was your love spilling out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twelve Days - Six

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bienfilatre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bienfilatre/gifts).



> S5, after "Shells"

Had you thought, perhaps, that fate had been cruel to you? That your life had seen more cruelty than other lives? No, never. You were raised in an Iron Maiden and took its spikes for your own bones, but you were far too well-bred to notice, much too disciplined to spare a glance at your own chest. You never believed in a world without mercy, but mercy was there for the proper conditions. So what they saw was a man with conditions for mercy, and they hated you. When they hated you, you took it like the Maiden, a condition of existence, something you deserved. 

When love and hate take their seats at your heart's table, where do they sit? Not on opposite ends. Perhaps elbow to elbow? Perhaps they fit into one chair. That's what happens when care gets mixed with cruelty: love mixed with hatred. That's your love.

There’s not an unkind bone in her body and you respond to her kindness. So does everybody, everybody says they love her, but what is that, is that love? It’s a kind of relief, an afternoon’s sunshine after it has rained for ever. Do you think you most deserved her because you've been rained on most? Or do you hold back because that's a thought you've been trained to banish? You need mercy or you'll die, Wesley. You need her. But you don't know what she would have done with your love. 

If you’d had her you’d just have wanted to worship her. So here’s Illyria, here’s fate being kind to you. If you still must persist in calling that kindness. If you can’t be brave enough to look down, for once, and cry out.


End file.
